Saturday, November 24, 2012

Warning: From 66A to 666

Our Opposition members in the parliament are fighting for you. It would
seem your lives depend on them. Reservations, anti-FDI protests, Lokpal bills
and any number of issues that are important to people get their attention. The only one that doesn’t get their
attention is your freedom or democracy itself. They will agree blindly to
any measure and law that will curtail or suppress your freedoms. Last year
actor Om Puri and IAC activist Kiran Bedi were served with notices for mocking
MPs. This year Arvind Kejriwal was served with a notice for calling MPs “rapists
and murderers”. All three managed to get away being public figures. You’re not
going to be so lucky.

One man arrested for tweets against Union Minister P. Chidambaram’s son,
Karthi Chidambaram, in Pudduchery. Two women arrested in Mumbai for negative
comments on Bal Thackeray’s funeral shutting down Mumbai. Both made a lot of
noise in the media. Two more arrests, which didn’t get much media attention,
were of men for allegedly posting offensive comments against some Congress
leaders on their Facebook group in May 2012. The last two are also accused of
insulting the national flag but when the images were shown on Headlines Today the flags were
of the Congress party and not of the country. The two were also employees of
Air India who were sacked for their supposed online indiscretion. Not
surprisingly, all these arrests have occurred in Congress ruled states. At the
heart of all this is Kapil Sibal,
the man who seems to want to throttle online freedoms. I recommend you read
these two posts before you proceed further: “To Kapil Sibal, With Love -Deep Throat” and “How Indian MSM Blacked-out Sibal's Grand Scheme”.

In all this, we constantly get to hear of the IT Act of 2008 and particularly section 66A. Here’s a summary of what this section is:

Any person who sends, by means of a computer resource or a
communication device,—

a) Any information that is grossly offensive or has menacing character;
or

b) Any information which he knows to be false, but for the purpose of
causing annoyance, inconvenience, danger, obstruction, insult, injury, criminal
intimidation, enmity, hatred or ill will, persistently by making use of such
computer resource or a communication device,

c) Any electronic mail or electronic mail message for the purpose of
causing annoyance or inconvenience or to deceive or to mislead the addressee or
recipient about the origin of such messages.

Punishment - Imprisonment for a term which may extend to three years
and with fine.

That doesn’t need much explanation. Anything you say online which is “offensive”
to anyone is liable for a 3 year imprisonment. Well, that is just about
anything because anything that is said may likely offend someone or the other. Therefore, to speak is a sin. How did
we get here? I guess it all starts with religion. First, the ministry of “hurt
sentiments” tells you can’t offend religious sentiments. Well, actually what
they mean is you can offend Hinduism or Hindu culture but you can’t talk about
Islam or Christianity. Of course, there isn’t a single moron who won’t say “we
welcome fair criticism”. But that is the usual “having said that...” type of
statement you will hear from our intellectuals. Then slowly it extends to
others. You see, we bestow upon him the title of ‘father of the nation’ with a ‘Mahatma’
prefix and then he too is beyond criticism. So anything negative or any negative book you write about MKGandhi will
be banned. Even Narendra Modi will ban it. Maybe in a few 100 years MKG
will be declared God’s avatar and temples will be built for him. And when you
talk of religion can Sonia Gandhi or
Rahul Gandhi be far behind? Oh yes, in our times Sonia Gandhi is where it
all began with. Soon we may reach the third ‘6’. We have gotten to 66A and soon
we might get to ‘666’ too.

In Christianity, the number 666
is the number of the Beast and represents the Devil. It’s the number of the
Anti-Christ. An interesting theory
floating around is how the number 666 has infiltrated all the bar-codes. Sounds
funny? Yes it is! But do read this fascinating theory “Warning: 666 is coming”. It’s about all the smart cards and
other cards. Maybe we should check our ‘Aadhar’
cards too. But funny stuff apart, in India it did start with Sonia and Rahul
Gandhi. Given the performance of UPA it was natural that an abundance of jokes
on the Gandhis, including parodies and often offensive material started
floating on the internet. That, to the Congress party, is nothing short of
blasphemy.

Outlook Magazine
carried an article on all the funny stuff on Sonia Gandhi in December 2011.
This was just after Kapil Sibal had started attempts to crackdown on internet
users. Then came the August 2012 blockade of certain Twitter and FB accounts as
also blockade of certain websites. A few months back this site wasblocked by BSNL for nearly a
month. No reason whatsoever was given and the blockade was lifted after a few
complaints. The images in the Outlook magazine, some ridiculous and some funny,
are not glowing tributes to SoniaG. Naturally, the Congress could hardly find
humour in any of these. Kapil Sibal reacted similarly to Barkha Dutt over the
Shoddy Journalism episode. Since then the GOI has been systematically trying to
bring down online accounts that offend the Congress, its president or their
allies in any manner. The Google statistics produced by Outlook also make
interesting reading on how many attempts the GOI has made to silence free
speech. Every disease has its own symptoms so too democracy. Corruption and
scams are common to all forms of govts. But
the sure sign that democracy is terminally ill is when free speech starts to
vanish and more and more laws silencing people are made. This is especially
so when public figures seem to get more protection from insults and ridicule. I
need not even embark on a greater story of the indecency and frequent
defamatory speeches by our public figures.

The IT Act of 2008, with this now infamous 66 number, was passed in
December 2008. But go back a few months in 2008. Here’s what the Express report states: “Pune June 21 The Pune police on Saturday arrested one more person for
posting derogatory content about Congress party chief Sonia Gandhi on an orkut
community. Police have identified the accused as Nithin Chkravarthi Suresh
Sahha (22), a resident of Sharan Apartment, Begum Peth in Hyderabad”. So
even before this particular IT Act was passed in December 2008 there appears to
have been enough laws under which people could be summarily arrested for
insulting Sonia Gandhi. But yes, there was a need to widen the scope and make
everything offensive you see. The two guys arrested in Mumbai in the India
Today report are also accused of “insulting” NCP ministers Praful Patel and
Sharad Pawar. We are clearly in the process of taming the beast.

Our media which enjoys complete freedom of speech also doesn’t like
people to have the same freedom. They won’t stand up against foolish laws like
66A. Understandable! As of now there are two petitions in courts against the
66A clause. (Read Here) It is
a surprise, though, that the petition isn’t to strike down the whole Act
itself. There are enough laws to protect a person or entity against defamation
in this country. Maybe the punishments need to be made more stringent under
those laws. But a law, whose misuse enables the police to arrest anyone at any hour
at the whims of stupid politicians, surely signals the death of democracy. It’s
a warning!

The Opposition stands up for your rights against an evil law? Well, FDI
or Lokpal are important issues no doubt. It
may be interesting to learn that this IT Act 2008 was passed in the parliament
without a single objection and without a single discussion. It threatens
our democracy; the very basis of our society and existence. That’s how good our
Opposition parties are. Next time you vote, maybe ask your candidate whether
they will repeal this law itself and not amend it. The other option is to be prepared for the number 666 stamped on you.

6 comments
:

Informative as always !! You have to fight a little every day to keep your freedom by voicing your dissent. If you ignore these day to day fights, you (or your coming generations) will lose all your freedom, eventually. Now you have two options; either you fight a war in future to bring your freedom back or keep living in the hell, as you lived for almost thousand of years.

The interesting thing is that no opposition party spoke against this law and allowed it to pass quietly. That means they don't want us to be free either. The oppo. leaders, of course are immune - their high profile status ensures that. That leaves the mango man stranded up shit creek w/out a paddle. How many people know that the original Constitution of India, un-amended, gave us complete freedom of speech. But Nehru moved the first amendment to curtail it. Even more interesting, the US constitution's first amendment gives them complete freedom of speech. They treat it as so sacred that it is always referred to as the First Amendment (with capital letters). The Indian statute books make good and sure that we are indeed mango people in a banana republic.

The interesting thing is that no opposition party spoke against this law and allowed it to pass quietly. That means they don't want us to be free either. The oppo. leaders, of course are immune - their high profile status ensures that. That leaves the mango man stranded up shit creek w/out a paddle. How many people know that the original Constitution of India, un-amended, gave us complete freedom of speech. But Nehru moved the first amendment to curtail it. Even more interesting, the US constitution's first amendment gives them complete freedom of speech. They treat it as so sacred that it is always referred to as the First Amendment (with capital letters). The Indian statute books make good and sure that we are indeed mango people in a banana republic.

It is becoming such hypocrisy in Indian TV channels that it is worse than our politicians hitting each other or tearing copies in Parliament.

Today (Nov 29, 2012) was watching on 66A on NDTV at 10pm (Mr. Kapil Sibal was present) and the NDTV anchor Ms Barkha Dutt was questioning. At one point Mr. Sibal even said - Barkha you not even a lawyer. Please stop asking questions on that! Yesterday also again same Ms. Dutt on 66A with a lot of people.

I am still unable to know what they get out of it? Why they do not understand is such kind of shoddy presentation and real useless questioning is not going to take anywhere? What is that actually media of this country want to convey?

Comments are welcome and are not moderated so as to allow free speech. However, comments that are off topic, abusive, defamatory or slanderous may be deleted. Comments disclosing personal information of individuals/entities will be deleted.Comments appearing here do not imply endorsement by author of this blog.